Our stop in Hoi An was actually more of a coincidence than something planned in advance. Only at very short notice had I found out that an acquaintance of ours runs a hostel near the beach there. Until I chatted with him, Hoi An hadn't been on our radar at all, and we almost missed this little gem. Luckily we were able to organise the comfortable bus ride there (described in the last post) and once again arrived late in the evening. To get something to eat, we took a night walk through the old town. Everything was deserted. The wooden doors and shutters of the yellow-walled buildings were firmly closed, and hardly anyone apart from us was out and about. But despite the darkness and emptiness of the old town, you could clearly see what a delightful little place it must be once the hustle and bustle began. That was confirmed the next day as we wandered through the lanes and streets of the town centre in the sunshine.
We should probably have started a sticker album for UNESCO World Heritage Sites, because once again we were walking right through one without having known anything about it beforehand. Vietnam seems to be home to an extraordinary number of these sites. All the happier we are with our decision to travel through this country. The old town is an architectural mix of Chinese, Japanese and French colonial influences, reflected in its numerous houses, temples, bridges and pagodas. The best known is probably the Japanese Bridge with its pagoda.
Hoi An is the perfect town for buying inexpensive clothes. The classic tourist has a tailor-made suit made here for a phenomenal price in a high-quality fabric of their choice (around €200 for a men's suit, including shipping to Europe). Everything from silk in all price ranges to cashmere and organic linen is available here. You can also have old and current designs from well-known brands recreated; the catalogues are ready in the shops. Tailoring is a highly respected profession here and is traditionally passed on within the family. I treated myself to a long, inexpensive silk kimono off the rack. Tailors' shops and clothing stores line up next to each other, decorating the yellow-painted walls of the lanes with their colourful displays of suits, ball gowns and trendy onesies. In between, tourists stroll from shop to shop, restaurant and snack bar.
The streets are filled with the bustle of bicycles, rickshaws and vehicles typical of Vietnam. Narrow lanes and the town centre are densely hung with garlands. Lantern shops decorate the townscape with their beautiful handmade lights.
So it's a tourist hotspot, and there's a wide range of food, drinks and cafés to relax in. The broad river channel, which you cross via a wide bridge, separates the town centre from a smaller island with a pedestrian zone, where in the evening you'll find a night market and lots of street food that seems rather strange to us Europeans.
Boats ply the channel and are decorated with lanterns and lit up in the evening. As soon as it gets dark, everything here starts to glow and shine in colour. Lantern sellers are on hand to sell their "good luck lanterns". You buy them right on the bridge, the tea light in the middle is lit, and then they're set on the river with a long pole so they drift away. This creates a small (unfortunately not environmentally friendly, but very beautiful) sea of lights.
There are also some spots and activities worth visiting in the surrounding area. I can recommend a short trip to this pretty town to anyone with a clear conscience. Since we were here during the football World Cup, in the evenings some locals sat around a TV that had been brought out onto the pavement so they could watch the match together with friends on stools. While strolling in the evening, I ate what was probably the best vegetarian banh mi (sandwich) of our whole Vietnam trip at a street stall here. We spent 5 nights here in total – two of them in the hostel of our friend, whom we had met at a surf camp in Sri Lanka. The weather played along perfectly; after our expeditions in the cooler north we got plenty of hours of sunshine. We were also in town at the same time as our new Canadian friends from the cave hike and kept bumping into each other. We met them for ice cream and a few pleasant hours on the beach and in the water. Unusually for us, we had only been travelling on land for several weeks. That was a great change, but it also revived our longing for water experiences. So, following the motto "stop when it's at its best", we decided not to visit the remaining southern destinations in Vietnam but to move on. That way we didn't have to bother with a visa extension either, and we picked our next adventure from the possible flight routes.
Enjoy clicking through the photo gallery and our video.